Thankfully all the sweets in the office have disappeared. This means there is less chance to eat rubbish during the ten hours of the day I’m chained to my headset. Unfortunately the sweets at home seem to be hanging about a little longer, not to mention biscuits, mince pies and assorted other bits of Christmas leftover junk. Considering I bought so much less this year I don’t understand why it seems to be lasting so long. Maybe Commando had another tin stashed away and he’s secretly refilling this one when I’m at the office.

After ten hours of being verbally abused on the phone by people who don’t want to pay their bills, can’t afford their payment plans, didn’t get their deliveries on time, think everything is too expensive, had to wait too long in a call queue to moan at me, aren’t happy with their cookers, fridges, microwaves, kettles…the tin of sweets is hard to resist. The little pile of shiny coloured wrappers is incriminating. The Wii Fit sits in the corner accusing me. My trousers are tight. Hang on, I need another sweet.

Commando showed me an article in the local Echo about a dating website called BeautifulPeople.com. Apparently more than five thousand members have been expelled because they put on too much weight over Christmas. The site calls them ‘festive fatties’ and says they contravene the strict ban on ugly people. Vigilante members have been reporting them for not fitting the high standard of beauty demanded. According to the founder of BeautifulPeople.com ‘Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which we were founded.’ Not to worry though, the news was broken very kindly and they were sent emails with details of boot camps to help them get back to looking good. No pressure then.

Commando seemed to think the whole thing was quite comical. Sad was more the word that sprang to my mind. Imagine getting an email like that in January. What a horrible bunch of opinionated, arrogant, shallow…. Hang on a minute, is Commando trying to tell me something?